Animating multiple columns to sound
Using Sound Drivers Addon

Some images of a quick sample. 



Install Addon.  Drag the sound_drivers folder into one of your addons folders.  It can be found under Testing Support Level Animation Category.

Add speaker to scene, associate music file, then bake to 1000 splits of frequency range. (Make a cuppa while it bakes)  These are baked to custom properties AA0 to AA999 on the speaker.

Add a torus (or group of objects) to the scene.  Set up a sounddriver using channel 0 (AA0 in this case). Multiple drivers can be used with multiple bakes.  Select all objects you want as a "unit".  As a simple example I've added one sounddriver using channel AA0 to drive the z scale of the torus.  Any object being driven by channel 0 (eg AA0, AB0, ) will be converted to approp channel.  



From the 3d toolbar SoundDrive panel, choose  visualiser type grid and the size you desire, I've chosen 25 rows x 40 columns,  a grid is created with each unit being driven by the assoc. sound bake.  Use the Offset sliders to arrange, much like the array modifier.



Each unit is parented to an empty and all to a master empty "ST_Handle". Which can be moved / scaled to suit. Reorganizing can be achieved using a simple script.